Reconciling ourselves to reconciliation <$NoAd$>(from a series last month in the Boston Globe) …
Congressional conference committees, charged with reconciling differences between House- and Senate-passed versions of the same legislation, have become dramatically more powerful in shaping bills. The panels, made up of a small group of lawmakers appointed by leaders in both parties, added a record 3,407 “pork barrel” projects to appropriations bills for this year’s federal budget, items that were never debated or voted on beforehand by the House and Senate and whose congressional patrons are kept secret. This compares to just 47 projects added in conference committee in 1994, the last year of Democratic control.
…
Lawmakers say they are still finding items in the Medicare package that passed last winter that they find objectionable, such as the financial penalty on seniors who wait to sign up for the Medicare prescription drug plan.
“There was no way that every member of Congress could hold up their right hand and say, `I read every page of that bill before the vote,’ ” said Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, noting that members had just one day to examine the 400-plus-page bill before voting on a law that would change health-care allotments across the country.
This whole article, by the Globe’s Susan Milligan, and the whole series, are really worth reading.
